Four of the major characters in Captain America: Civil War have starred in their own movies. Ten more have had major story lines in other films. Add in a new villain, a new hero primed for his own spin-off, and a quick appearance from the previous movie’s baddie for good measure, and the new Marvel effort starts to look more like a series of spinning plates than any normal blockbuster.

Directors Joe and Anthony Russo, veterans of ensemble sitcoms like Arrested Development, Community, and Happy Endings, are used to spinning plates, though. “You know, typically on those shows sometimes we deal with up to 10 characters an episode, in 22 minutes,” says Joe Russo.

Russo and his brother, who directed Captain America: The Winter Soldier, have become the de facto guardians of the Marvel galaxy as the helmers of the two upcoming Avengers: Infinity War films. Where directors like Ant-Man’s Peyton Reed or Guardians’s James Gunn can pop in to a tiny corner of Marvel’s ever-expanding universe and tell a story, the Russos are juggling the films in which nearly every character gets involved—a colossal task of organization, much less storytelling.

What’s essential is the script, from writers Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus, which the Russo brothers say they returned to repeatedly. “Look, it’s our job now because we are going to be carrying forward into Infinity War to make sure that all of the characters are tracking, and that the audience is having a response to each character,” says Joe.

So even though Civil War is experienced as an overarching story, with Captain America (Chris Evans) and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) facing off against the future of the Avengers themselves, the way to really analyze it—and the way the Russos kept the whole ship moving—is to go character by character. So let’s do it.

Captain AmericaAs the titular character, Cap’s stance is probably the most straightforward. “It’s sort of like every character has their own superpowers, and part of Captain America’s superpower is that he’s called Captain America,” says Anthony Russo. “We definitely use this character and these movies as a road into feeling out what those issues are in our world today.”

In Civil War the return of Cap’s old friend Bucky Barnes, a.k.a. the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) as an alleged terrorist forces Cap to choose between the Avengers initiative he’s leading and supporting his old friend.

“Some of this story just works itself out,” says McFeely. “You know that Steve is going to search for Bucky, and he’ll find Bucky, and he’ll lose Bucky, and he’ll get Bucky back.”

In contrast, Bucky’s hilariously contentious dynamic with Sam Wilson, a.k.a. Falcon (Anthony Mackie), came through edits, when the writers realized the power of pitting Cap’s closest friends against each other in a gentle rivalry. “That was, I will say, a surprise in later drafts where we realized, let’s put them together and they could have pretty great friction,” says McFeely, laughing. “That, I think, pays off every time.”

Iron ManAs Captain America’s main adversary in the film, going along with the United Nations’ plan to regulate the Avengers, Iron Man is in the unfamiliar position of fighting against his teammates. With Robert Downey Jr. playing the character for the eighth time, it was up to him to guide the writers on what made sense for the character.

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“Robert [Downey Jr.] is the foremost expert on Tony Stark, so if we hit a wrong note in the script, he knows it from 50-yard bound,” says Markus. “When you go to his trailer and he’s got the whole script flattened out on the wall like, ‘No, we are doing this and then doing this and this doesn’t make sense.’ You’re like, ‘You are right.’”

Courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures.

T’Challa / Black PantherOne of two major new characters introduced in Civil War, Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther joins Iron Man’s side only after his father dies in an explosion apparently caused by Bucky Barnes. “We needed an aggrieved party from the real world, from the outside world, to say like, ‘We don’t like what you’re about to do. That’s not how we do it,’” Markus explains. His character also develops a surprising connection with Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow because, as Markus continues, “It is two people coming out of the shadows, in effect, both uncomfortable with the spotlight.”

Peter Parker / Spider-ManThe new Spider-Man played by Tom Holland, on the other hand, emerges late in the story, recruited by Tony Stark to join his team in a scene that uses effective shorthand to remind audiences that we already know the beats of Peter Parker’s story pretty well.

“It sort of works in our favor that there have been five movies fairly recently, so I don’t think anybody is really broken up on not being able to see Uncle Ben die on-screen,” says McFeely. “We leave all that stuff to the actual Spider-Man movies.”

Black Widow / Natasha RomanoffThough she spent the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier on the run from the law—or, as Joe Russo puts it, telling “the government to in essence kiss her ass” —Black Widow is on the side of Iron Man’s law and order in Civil War. “She now sees that they have made some very public mistakes as she states in the film and feels that they owe it to society to subjugate themselves to order, or to a higher power,” Joe adds. “Also, remember she is a character who was a loner for years being trained as an assassin, and now she has a surrogate family. It is very important to her to maintain that family.”

McFeely, in turn, calls Natasha one of the “smartest characters.” “It’s part of her journey from this woman who lived in the shadows to this woman who has to—even though she may not want to—has to become this leader.”

Sam Wilson / FalconIn comparison, Joe says, “Sam’s question is a quest of loyalty.” While Cap’s decision can be seen as “valiant” on an emotional level, on a “more traditional, superficial level,” Falcon’s decision—to join Cap on the side of the rebels—can be read as extreme. “Now, Sam has incredible loyalty to Cap, which would make it extremely difficult for him to ever walk away from Cap,” he explains. “I think they share the same code, Cap and Sam, so Cap would have to violate that code in order to lose Sam as a friend.”

“He is sort of less invested in the Avengers,” says Markus. “He’s not defined by being a superhero. In fact, when we met him in Winter Soldier, he wasn’t one. He was a former soldier who was called upon to be heroic so that, almost more than any of them, secure in his personal identity so that it’s like, ‘Really? You guys are having a fight about being a superhero? Fine.’”

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Wanda / Scarlet Witch“Wanda is a character with great power, and you see her at the beginning of the movie being mentored by Cap, who is the patriarch of the Avengers,” says Joe about the character played by Elizabeth Olsen, who spends the movie haunted by the death toll of an early battle scene. Wanda’s journey, in some ways, is about the reality of Cap’s argument. “You know, innocent people may at times get caught in the cross fire, but as Cap says, if you don’t continue to strive to do good, then there may reach a point where maybe nobody gets saved.”

She also develops an unusual relationship with Paul Bettany’s Vision, a now-sentient computer who was also first introduced in Ultron. They don’t quite start up the romance that takes place in the comics, but there’s a connection. “It’s hard to say how it’s going to work out when you have an actual person with a red face or the . . . and a woman who can shoot magic out of her hands.” admits Markus. “[But] there is a real energy that’s between them, that you immediately forget that he’s a red-faced robot.”

The Top 10 Best-Dressed Superheroes

A true testament to the transformative powers of style, Captain America is the patriotic alter ego of a World War II–era Brooklynite transformed by a team of army scientists into a Nazi-fighting Samaritan. He turns to inventor Howard Stark to outfit him in a scientifically advanced suit in a star-spangled palette (is that performance-tech heritage denim we see?) with G.I. Joe–inspired accessories, like a leather harness belt and M1 helmet mask.